


heinz 57

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [35]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, POKÉMON Detective Pikachu (2019), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Cat Vs. Pikachu, Gen, Pets, Pokemon Battle, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, Unintentional Bonding, accidental pokemon acquisition, begruding acceptance, ketchup, matt loves pikachu more than anyone in this bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 15:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “It has electricity in its face,” Wade warned him.(Wade makes a friend. Or rather, becomes the chosen one for about a week.)





	heinz 57

**Author's Note:**

> okay! We are moving along with our lives after a rough morning. Thank you to everyone who has been so, so, so great and supportive today. I just want to emphasize that I am not stopping writing fic for these idiots or anything like that. Not when there are still so many ideas out there. 
> 
> We are good! You know what else was good? Detective Pikachu!! Please go watch it friends, it is very heart warming. 
> 
> There are some references to child abuse, some Wade-typical violence, and a brief mention of animal cruelty. Please do what you need to, to take care of yourselves. 
> 
> Also! There aresome spoilers for Detective Pikachu in here. please read at your own risk!

He thought it was Bella. He honestly, truly thought it was Bella. And when he shoved it off the bed, it landed with a thud and wandered away and so he went on merrily thinking it was Bella.

But then Bella made a little ‘mrrlp?’ noise on the other side of the bed and he was suddenly slammed with full-force horror at the fact that a fucking raccoon had just climbed into bed with him.

He, with Bella tucked securely under his arm, was now on the hunt for this damn vermin.

 

 

The vermin was in the kitchen. Wade (and Bella) had tracked it there. It was chowing down on Bella’s food and she was not happy about it. She squirmed in his arms and generally made herself a nuisance, so Wade decided that fine, if this was the hill she wanted to die on, so fuckin’ be it. He dropped her and the sound made the kibble-rummaging in the kitchen stop.

Bella rounded the corner with her ears back. She went cautiously. Back tense.

Wade heard her hiss. A few pieces of kibble skittered around the food bowl.

Bella hissed again. The raccoon apparently failed to respond.

It must have been a pretty shitty one, he knew this because he had experienced more than his fair share of raccoons in the process of being dragged out on camping trips with his dad. They weren’t camping trips so much as excuses to become belligerently drunk out in the great outdoors, but still. There was sleeping outdoors. There were trees to climb. Streams to fall into. Fires to be made while being screamed at by a guy who thought that he was Bear fuckin’ Grylls.

What else could the camping experience possibly entail?

Thankfully, in all that mix, there had been Lucky, actual outdoorsmen and professional taxidermist, who, when Wade’s dad had finally passed out more or less in the fire, would take Wade out with him to go antagonize nature and catch that night’s dinner.

Lucky was the first person Wade met who had been born without the capacity to fear. Because of him, Wade was later able to decode the in-fucking-credible thought patterns of the guy his CO assigned him (read: trapped him with) to be buddies with in their unit, Tommy. Tommy, the guy who, to literally everyone in the goddamn unit’s continued shock, had managed to complete not one, not two, but _three_ tours in the Middle East without losing a single limb. Not so much as a hangnail for this fucker.

And this was despite the fact that Wade had personally carried his dumbass out of two completely separate wrecked buildings under fire at nineteen years old and then gotten screamed by no less than three different ranks of officer for it. Nobody screamed at Tommy.

There was no point. His skull absorbed sound and sense like a carpet wall. Nothing in. Nothing out.

Case in point: Tommy most recently wanted to know why the fuck Wade hadn’t responded to his wedding invite and had started posting his feelings about this on Wade’s civilian facebook wall. He did this despite multiple people in their old unit gently (and not-so-gently) informing him on these posts that Wade was no longer an acceptable guest to anyone’s life celebrations. But see. They didn’t understand.

Tommy had no fear.

Wade understood this.

He’d finally written back that night that unfortunately, he was busy. He’d been double-booked by two opposing politicians who’d hired him to kill the other that night.

“Dude, it’s my wedding,” Tommy wrote back without missing a beat.

And who the fuck was Wade to argue with that logic?

“Fuck man. I guess I’ll book a flight then?” he wrote back to the immediate horror of everyone else panicking on that post, up to and including the bride’s uncle.

So now he had a goddamn wedding to get to and, more pressingly, he had a raccoon in his kitchen. And this goddamn raccoon didn’t even have the decency to be a good one. Lucky had infuriated many a raccoon in his day and a handful of them, he’d done in Wade’s presence in some truly prophetic attempt to subvert Wade’s fledgling fight-or-flight instincts.

This one was staring down an eight-pound cat on linoleum and not even growling. Not even one bark from this overgrown, fingered rat.

Bella hissed. Wade leaned out from behind the edge of the island and went to grab her before she hurt herself on something that didn’t deserve the effort and finally got a good look at the bastard.

It was bright yellow.

 

 

Okay.

So.

Analyze the situation.

Step one: location. In the hall closest. Check.

Step two: location of aggressor. Outside the closet. Check.

Step three: status of aggressor. AGGRESSIVE. Check check check.

The thing made a _crazy_ sound out in the hall and Bella hissed from where Wade had her all clutched up against his chest.  

Step—step four: strategize. Where do you need to be in relation to the aggressor? And what is the path of least resistance to getting there? Detail potential obstacles.

Alright. Alright, alright, alright.

He could do this. All he needed to do was get the giant, _yellow_ blob-raccoon out of his apartment. He could do this. He just needed a weapon.

Bella hissed. Wade assessed her.

Sub-par weapon. Try again.

He rifled through the pockets of all the coats in the hall closet, hoping that he’d had the sense to forget a pistol in one of them.

Goddamnit. It turned out he wasn’t that stupid.

Fine. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

He checked the piles of shit at the bottom of the closet and assessed the vacuum as best as he could in the dark. It had a cord. Could he garrotte a raccoon? Did raccoons have enough neck for garroting?

Information: unclear.

Fuck. Try, try again.

Bella tried to stick her paw under the door. Wade scooped her back up and put her on his shoulder while he sorted through this.

The thing made its bizarre noise again, right outside the door.

No time, no time. Garotte it was.

 

 

Wade threw open the door and got the cord around the thing’s neck but then things took a turn he could not be faulted for not predicting.

He woke up when the healing factor kicked back in and found himself laying on the floor with both the cat and the racoon peering over him.

He grabbed the cat and scrambled away from the fucking _electric_ mutant rat-raccoon.

The rat was undeterred. It made happy(?), vicious(?) growls(?) and kind of tumble-walked toward him.

“BACK,” he ordered. And then, to his surprise, it obeyed. It took a step or so back and settled down on its haunches. Its ears were…weird. One seemed heavier than the other and kind of cocked to the side. Up close, it actually looked like a mix between a cat, a raccoon, and something with incredibly stubby legs.

A hamster, Wade realized with startling clarity. It looked like a bright yellow hamster, with long ears and a tail which spoke only tales of absolute chaos. A madness hamster the size of an honest to god raccoon.

Wade had lived a lot of life, but even he hadn’t come across anything like this before.

It made its noise.

Its noise was high-pitched. Its noise upset the cat.

“Okay,” Wade said slowly. “I think we need an expert.”

 

 

“Sweet Jesus.”

He would rather, on any day of the year, drink bleach than talk to Stark about literally anything, but Wade was 99% sure that this was a Thor-related creature and so needed the big guns. He’d lured the thing into a cardboard box (it had been fairly amenable to this when bribed with a little cat food) and nervously brought it to Stark Industries. The gal at the desk must have read horror and desperation in his fucked-up face because she called Stark’s personal head of security right away to talk to him.

The guy had evidently come down to the desk intending to scare Wade away with a burning torch or something, but was intimidated by the contents of Wade’s box and agreed that this was above his paygrade. He took Wade to Stark.

Stark, like a maniac, had taken one look at the box and waved at Wade to just fucking _open it_ , without any protection whatsoever, on one of his lab tables.

“It has electricity in its face,” Wade warned him before he did.

Stark had given him an eyebrow and re-gestured.

Fine man, but only one of them had multiple shots at life, here.

Wade opened the box. The massive rat-hamster had curled up inside of it. It scuffled around at the re-introduction of light and popped its head out to investigate Stark.

Stark then appeared to have a stroke.

“You—you just—stay right there,” he said, pointing mostly to the rat.

It shook itself out and then recognized Wade. It crowed at him.

“Oh my god,” Stark whimpered, then scrambled out of the lab, leaving Wade, once again, alone with this beast. He grimaced at it. It climbed out of the box in his direction.

“Oh, _hell_ no,” he whispered as it approached. “Huh-uh. No. HEY. No. You stay.”

And it?

Did?

 

 

“Oh my god.”

Wade had thought that with the addition of another scientist, he would get some answers or the demon would be removed from his possession, but instead, now he just had both Stark and Banner gaping at this rodent.

It scratched its ear.

It was, Wade was starting to see, a fairly easy-going rat. It liked cat food and to curl up in a ball. It was _very_ into trying to get itself under Wade’s hands.

But he would not be fooled.

Not today, Satan. Not today.

“Is—Is it real?” Banner asked. Wade realized belatedly that this question was directed at him.

“Real enough to fuckin’ break into my house,” he snapped, “Real enough to terrorize my cat.”

“So you touched it,” Banner said.

“Yeah, and it tried to _murder_ me.”

Banner clutched at the sides of his face with his hands.

“How?” he squeaked. The rat perked up and started bumbling towards him. It had a death wish. Wade should have known.

“Fucking shocked me. Like stickin’ a penny in an electrical outlet,” Wade explained.

The rat sat on its stubby haunches in front of Banner and cocked its head so its enormous ears fell the other way. Banner made a soft sound like he was in pain.

Wade kind of got it. It was _kind_ of cute, this rat. Very soft looking. Deadly, though. He needed these people to understand this.

“It tried to kill me,” he said, “It _did_ kill me. So if y’all want it, it’s fuckin’ yours, but otherwise I need to know how to kill it, once and for all.”

Both Stark and Banner cracked their necks looking at Wade in shock and horror.

“You seriously don’t know what this thing is, Wilson?” Stark asked.

Uh. Well. Some kind of marsupial?

 

 

“IT’S A PIKACHU.”

Okay, so the kid was a little erratic today. And _very_ loud.

“A—A—WADE—WADEWADEWADE. ITS—”

Not making a whole lot of sense. Breathlessness. Inability to form words. Damn. Lotta folks having strokes today.

“WADE WADE WADE—IT’S A PIKA—PIKA—”

The rat made its noise and Peter actually died. He made the soft, prolonged, closed-mouth rasp of a silent scream. Then snatched the thing off the table into a crushing hug before any of the adults in the room could intervene.

The rat _loved_ this. The rat had never been happier. It squirmed around in his arms and then cuddled in and made its noise many times.

“Oh my god,” Peter hiccupped, with actual tears in his eyes.

 

 

Peter had invited his two dorky school friends to Wade’s apartment to interact with the rat.

Peter was very insistent that he stop calling it ‘the rat.’

Stark and Banner were very insistent that he keep the rat alive for the next couple of days while they panicked and talked to four billion people Wade had no hoping of knowing or keeping track of. In the meantime, all he cared about was that the rat was _obsessed_ with him. It followed him everywhere. It wanted him to carry it and pick it up and hold it constantly.

It was kind of a needy rat.

Bella hated it. Wade had never been so proud of her.

“It’s so cute,” Michelle said, playing with the rat’s ears. “Oh my god, it’s _so_ cute.”

The rat cooed at her and her eyes got wider and more intense. She begrudgingly handed it over to Ned. He had a very similar reaction to it. Started singing to it.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Wade finally admitted. “Is this a cultural rat? Is this an American thing?”

Silence.

“Wade. Did you not have Pokémon growing up?”

Oho. Finally. A word Wade recognized. These were games. He knew these were games. He’d seen little figures of these game-things when he was in Tokyo ages ago.

The kids maintained their bared teeth.

“Is it? Not a game?” he tried.

“Wade, you’re not that old,” Peter said a little nervously for him.

Mmmmmmm.

Maybe not.

“It’s a kid thing, then,” he said.

“No, it’s like—you know Hello Kitty?” Peter tried.

Yes, of course he knew Kitty. Who didn’t know Kitty? Wade needed their names and addresses.

“It’s like, a thing on that level of notoriety.”

Oh.

Welp.

Wade did tend to skid by some of the simpler things in life in pursuit of the finer ones.

“So it’s a character,” he said, eyeing the rat. It wriggled out of Ned’s grip and tottered back over to his feet. It made its noise and held up its stubby little arms like a toddler.

“Yeah, like. The most iconic character—how do you not know this?” Peter asked, walking over and picking the rat up to comfort it in the face of Wade’s indifference.

Well. See. Wade grew up dealing with this cool thing called child abuse; so from about age six to late-teen-hood, he had been generally highly focused on getting from day to day whilst planning his father’s homicide. Baby Wade hadn’t had time for kitties or Pokémon or video games. Sure, he’d seen them, maybe heard a little while he was out and about, at school and the like.

But all that had paled in comparison to the glorious fantasies of arson he’d had cooking in the back of his brain back then.

“I had a somewhat traumatic childhood,” he said evenly. “Haven’t had a whole lot of time for Kitties or Pika-whatevers until the last ten years or so.”

The kids seemed suddenly cowed and very disappointed by this.

Peter stroked the rat as it waved its stubby arms at Wade and kicked up a fuss, as though it was desperate to be with him.

Michelle cleared her throat.

“Not to, uh. Change the subject, but you know who is secretly obsessed with Pikachu?” she said.

She had all their attention.

 

 

Red was crying. Honest to god crying, holding the rat and full-body sobbing into its soft head.

None of them really knew what to do now. Nelson either, for once. He and Page stood off to the side, biting their knuckles as they watched this scene.

“He, uh,” Nelson said after a moment. He cleared his throat and tried again as the rat patted at Red’s face and then mashed their cheeks together. It made its weird version of Bella’s ‘mrrlp.’ Red didn’t cope with that very well.

“He, uh. Didn’t have a whole lot as a kid,” Nelson continued. “And Pikachu was one of the last things he remembers being able to see and participate in with a group. Before the uh, blindness and dead-dad-ness. So I guess its, er. Kind of jarring to be brought back to that.”

Oh.

“You want it?” Wade offered. “I’ll give it to you, Red, no payment down.”

Red collected himself enough to stand up and shove the rat into Wade’s arm with uncalled for gravitas.

“You _need_ to take care of it,” he insisted, clutching at Wade’s forearms. “It _needs_ you.”

Uh. Sure. Okay, pal.

“Wade,” Red pleaded.

Okay, okay. For real. Whatever you want. Just stop fucking crying.

 

 

Red was too emotional to do anything but cuddle the rat and Peter was too appalled by Wade’s lack of awareness around the rat and so Wade soon found himself subjected to the rat’s tv show, during which he learned more about the rat and its cousins than he’d ever, ever wished to know.

When the others finally left (after fucking Pikachu had been showered with kisses and cuddles), Wade was left sitting between it and Bella wondering exactly what the fuck he was supposed to do now.

 

 

Pikachu liked to be tall, Wade figured out. And now that Pikachu had expressed an interesting in being tall, Bella decided that she needed to be on Wade’s shoulder at all times or else she would die. The two fought over Wade’s shoulder, but the battle didn’t last ‘cause Sparky let some bolts fly and Bella decided that she’d kick its ass at a later date. Potentially with reinforcements. She slinked off to mobilize the moths she’d been collecting in the bathroom window.

Pikachu settled its bizarre feet into the flesh of Wade’s shoulder, triumphant.

Wade tried to feed it a carrot as a gesture of good will.

Mission: unsuccessful.

 

 

He watched several hours of children’s television to better understand his opponent. Bella’s opponent. Bella’s enemy.

Then he called Red because he seemed well-versed in the lore around this thing and received intel in the form of Red saying to offer the thing ketchup to get in its good graces.

Weird intel, but okay.

He checked his fridge. No ketchup. Ness had loved ketchup to the point that Wade often wondered if carbs had been just a excuse for its consumption in their household, but he himself was more of a mustard and ranch kind of guy.

The rat waddled over and pawed at his pantleg. He looked at it. It waved its madness-tail a bit. He looked back at the fridge.

“You wanna try mayo?” he asked it.

 

 

“Hey, Pete.”

“Yeah.”

“You know anything about…uhhhh, veterinary care?”

“Wade, if you killed Pikachu, I will kill _you_.”

Wow. Was that really all it took?

“Rat’s not dead, just a little. Uh. Green. Anyways, how do I make it puke?”

“Oh my god.”

 

 

Sparky was fine. Couple of hairballs and it was good to go. No mayo, Wade wrote on the fridge’s whiteboard.

Peter, though. Peter was traumatized. He came over to babysit and had tucked the thing protectively into his chest when Wade got back from the store. Bella, in her fury and jealousy, had climbed onto the very center of Peter’s back and dug her nails in. Peter glared at Wade.

Wade sighed and passed all three of them to dump the bags on the counter and dig out the golden egg.

He peeled the seal off the ketchup bottle and then stood, staring at it—glaring at it—trying to figure out the least messy way to offer it to the rat. But oho. The rat had a brilliant sense of smell. Wade almost dropped the bottle when he glanced over back to the couch and ended up with a mouthful of yellow fluff.

Sparky chirped and wriggled and bounced in excitement until Wade nervously offered it the bottle.

And then it was gone.

Vanished into thin air.

Peter was confused. Wade thought that maybe he’d finally found the thing’s ruby slippers.

Not so.

Peter found the rat under Wade’s bed, licking aggressively at little blips of ketchup straight from the top of the bottle.

“O…kay,” he said. “I guess we’ll just leave you alone for now.”

 

 

It was fine to have Sparky when it was the weekend, but Wade didn’t have time to be babysitting the world’s worst raccoon during the week. He tried to pawn it off onto Stark, but Stark had given the thing a finger to hold and it had sparked at him and he’d finally remembered his heart condition.

No, thanks, Stark said. Give it to Banner.

Banner didn’t want it. He was allergic, or so he claimed.

Peter wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything ever, but May took one look at it and said, ‘Huh-uh. No. No more strays. No more aliens.’

Which left two options. Red or Castle.

Castle took one look and said, ‘fuck no. My kids were obsessed with that thing. I’m getting flashbacks.’ And so Red it was.

 

 

Red held the rat very tenderly in his lap. He held its little front paws and played with it and it _loved_ him. It made its noise and he squished it in joy and Nelson told Wade that they were watching it for one day and one day only.

“He will get attached. And when it goes, he will cry for two years, Wade.”

Wade bit his tongue and expertly did not mention that Red was already attached and would be crying for five, not two years. He made himself say thank you instead and then set off to work.

 

 

Nelson was right. He’d fucked up.

Sparky liked Red because Red liked it, but also probably because Wade called Matt ‘Red,’ and upon reflection, that made him its rightful owner.

Red did not want to relinquish the rat, but he did because he’d convinced himself ages ago that he was not allowed to have prolonged contact with anything that made him too happy. The rat was sad to see him go. It crawled up onto Wade’s shoulder and made sad noises towards the office when they got back out to the street.

Passersby were a little taken aback by it (and by its vehicle) but seemed to decide pretty quickly that it was simply wonderfully made animatronic.

 

 

It short-circuited Nate’s arm that night.

That was fun.

Then it shorted out the whole apartment complex and that was less fun.

 

 

Wade lost it on day four and trekked his ass all the way back to Hell’s Kitchen to re-appropriate it from the offices of Nelson, Murdock & Page. Red made sad noises back at it this time and Nelson covered his ears and told Page to cover his eyes so he didn’t crack.

 

 

And then finally, after a week, Pikachu’s mad dragon cousin showed up out of nowhere and tried to start a riot in Midtown and Stark called Wade to ask if he could please borrow the rat for some testing.

Sure. Take it.

He took it down to SI and watched the NYPD try to tame a dragon for a few minutes before entering Stark’s atrium. He was waiting inside.

“Man, that thing’s a lot scarier in person than in the cartoon,” Wade said, handing over the rat. Stark didn’t take it. His lips were very pursed.

Wade shook Sparky in his direction to help him remember the purpose of this visit.

“Wilson?”

“Hm?”

“I cannot believe what I am about to say—literally know that I hate everything that I am about to say—but I think you need to go become a Pokémon trainer.”

Sorry. Wade had water in his ears from drowning in the Hudson the night before.

“You heard me.”

“No, no,” Wade said, gesturing to his ears. “Like I said, water.”

“Take the rat. Make it fight the dragon. That thing’s melting half the city’s riot shields.”

No.

No, no, no, _no_. Come _on_. This was Peter shit. This was Hawkeye shit. Hell, this was other-Wilson shit.

“Dude, I’m not a cartoon character, and the more riot shields out of commission, the better for—”

“I have literally just made a goddamn pokéball, Wade. I’m not happy about this either, man. But the fuckin’ Pikachu chose you, so,” Stark sighed and put a hand on his shoulder, “I guess you’re Red.”

Wait.

What.

_No._

Stark sighed and shook his head. Defeat was stamped into every bit of his body language. Fuck. He was serious.

Wade grabbed the rat off his shoulder and held it firmly at eye-level.

“I fucking hate you,” he told it.

It said its name in delight.

Little bastard. Now he had to fight a dragon.

 

 

He stomped out with the rat still at eye level and people in the crowd were understandably baffled. He stormed through the police chumps trying to hold up a barrier and snarled and growled at them until they moved out of his way, and then, once the blue fucking sea had parted, he dropped the rat in front of the dragon.

The dragon paused in its destruction of a fire hydrant and stared at the rat.

Sparky got down on its four paws and arched its little fluffy back. It then threw out some cheeky-sparks as a declaration of war. It snarled.

The dragon snorted and screeched in response. And the little monster didn’t give it so much as an inch.

And Wade kind of.

Wade kind of.

Fuck.

He kind of felt that. The joy of the challenge.

Maybe him and Sparky had something in common after all: bloodlust.

“Alright, you shitty mouse,” he said, “You show ‘em whose boss.”

The rat _loved_ the shit-talking. It sparked even bigger than before. The dragon abandoned the fire hydrant and began to approach. The rat did not move. When there was about five yard between them, the dragon roared with its jaws wide open. Everyone in the street had to feel it in their chests. Wade felt it in his, reverberating like a long beat from a bass at a concert, and damn. Shit. That was almost scary.

The crowd of folks on the streets found it scary, that was for sure. Wade didn’t really know what to do here, but a tug at his pants brought his gaze down and he saw that  a handful of ten-year-olds had crammed in around him, waving Nintendo consoles in his face.

“Red! Mister Red! You gotta use Thunder Bolt!” they were all saying over each other.

“Uh, what?” he asked them.

“Thunder bolt! Tell Pikachu to use Thunder bolt!”

Well, fuck. Looks like he’d finally found some experts. About goddamn time.

“How?” he asked them.

“You just gotta say it,” one of the two girls said. “Say, ‘Pikachu, use Thunder bolt!’”

Alright, sure.

“Sparky, use Thunder bolt,” he instructed at the rat.

And the fucking thing lit up with a circle of electricity and then called down a line of _lightning_ right into its chaos-tail. The ground shook around the rat and the place where it stood went black with soot.

“Oh, okay,” he breathed in horror as the kids at his hip cheered and jumped up in and down. “You’re maybe not just a rat.”

The dragon didn’t look so amazed. It started advancing on the rat and Wade panicked.

“What—what next?” he asked the kids before they were all looking at a squashed rodent out there.

“Headbutt him to ward him off!”

Fuckin’ sure? Why not? He called this over and the rat waited for the dragon to get within three feet before really just fuckin’ smashing the top of its head into the thing’s stomach. Like, absolutely crushing it without even a care in the world. Wade covered his mouth in shock.

What the fuck.

What the fuck.

“Quick attack, quick attack!” the kids cheered.

He kind of wanted to throw himself back through the riot shields to grab Sparky and scram, honestly.

“Quick attack, quick attack! Now, before it recovers!”

But who was he to say jack among these professionals?

“Sparky, quick attack?” he suggested.

And the rat threw its soft body forward hard with a little shock and then harder into the dragon’s neck. The dragon staggered back from the impact. The kids cheered and started chanting ‘thunder bolt’ again.

“This game is so violent, oh my god,” Wade gasped. But ultimately, he followed the advice and Sparky brought down a hunk of Thor’s wrath to electrocute the shit out of the poor dragon. The kids encouraged him to carry on this barrage of terror until he was damn sure that the rat was going to break its little skull right in half.

The dragon, for its part, did a great job beating the Sparkster with its wings and singeing its little face black. But Sparky, bless him, shook it off like a champ and got right back up every time.

Eventually, the kids demanded that Wade call thunder and then thunder bolt, just as the dragon used a cute flame-thrower-esque move on the rat and the crowd in general and the resulting flash of light made Wade wince and throw up his arms.

When he lowered them, the kids around his waist were shrieking and jumping up and down and he found himself looking at a very scruffy, very, very tired Sparky sitting prim and proper in the middle of the riot-shield circle. The dragon was slumped down across from it, unconscious.

“Holy shit, you’re a demon,” Wade breathed.

 

 

Wade let the kids throw Stark’s make-shift pokéball at the fire-kaiju because they were the real MVPs here and then he let them deliver the ball to Stark’s hands in triumph. They handed it over as though they were handing off Excalibur. Stark, for his part, made a huge fuss over the three of them and had them all throw up their fists in triumph for the cameras which had rushed over to them.

Wade, in the meantime, went forward to collect the rat.

It was tired.

It pawed at his boot and he picked it up and set it on his shoulder. At this point, he figured, it had earned its ride home. And a new bottle of ketchup. People noticed this and he had to put on his Deadpool snarl to get through the crowd in the direction of home. It didn’t stop the cameras, but it did keep folks from following him.

 

 

“You,” Red said that night, playing with Sparky’s paws again, “Are a little champion, you know that?”

The rat said its name happily.

“Yeah, you are.”

Nelson gave Wade a strong look.

“I didn’t fucking ask for this,” Wade said.

“I dunno, man. Canadian Pokémon trainer. Real-life, Canadian Pokémon trainer.”

The rat squealed in delight where Red was blowing raspberries into its fuzzy belly. Bella watched this from the back of the couch with her tail switching back and forth in pure hatred.

“Matt recorded the whole thing,” Nelson said, watching him unknowingly piss off the cat. “Said he hasn’t gotten so riled up over a fight since his dad’s last one.”

Yeah, well.

Still.

“It ain’t mine. Stark’s taking it back this weekend.”

“Aw, but he’s famous now.”

“Don’t call it ‘he,’ you ain’t know its preferences.”

Nelson laughed and patted Wade on the shoulder.

“Just an fyi,” he said, “Peter’s going to have feelings.”

 

 

Peter was horrified that Wade could ever, ever, _ever_ have let Sparky engage in such a battle. He thought this was animal cruelty. He was desperately concerned about the dragon and had allegedly checked in with Stark no less than six times in the last hour for status reports. He had been assured that the dragon was taking a nap, but that did nothing to stop his ire.

“Kiddo, we watched the same show, right?” Wade asked. “They’re battle animals, like half of them. This one is definitely a battle animal.”

“They’re not,” Peter snapped with a clenched jaw. “They’re just animals. Fantastic animals, but animals still. Just trying to live their lives. They don’t want to fight. Humans are the ones that make them fight.”

Wade watched Sparky standoff with Bella over one of the crinkly ribbon balls from her toy collection and raised an eyebrow. Maybe the beasts as a whole didn’t want to fight, sure. But this little shit sure did.

“ _Wade_.”

“I dunno what you want, Pete. They aren’t real.”

“This one is.”

“And?”

“And he fought a _Charizard_ , man. He’s gotta be traumatized.”

Wade would beg to differ. If anything, the rat was now energized. Some Red cuddles had warmed it right back up.

“Okay, sure,” he said. “It’s traumatized. Lemme just put it in fake-animal therapy. Oh, wait. It’s not mine. It’s not my problem.”

Peter whacked his arm so he looked at him in the face.

“He _is_ yours, though,” he said with undue seriousness in his young face. “He chose you.”

“Mmm. Doesn’t fly with that whole consent thing, Pete. We both gotta want it to--”

“Oh my god—what’s it gonna take, Wade?”

“It ain’t gonna take shit, kiddo,” Wade sighed. He tapped on the table until Peter grumpily sat down across from him. “Peter,” he said, “The rat isn’t staying here. You’re right. It’s a wild animal. And it’s going home soon. So, like. Breathe, kiddo. It did me a solid, so I’m letting it stay here for now. And I ain’t make it fight; it coulda jumped back any time it wanted to. Little shit’s just got a taste for blood. Probably why it hunted me down to begin with.”

Peter didn’t like this explanation. But then he looked over to where Bella had finally gotten her due and had whacked Sparky in the head with a paw. She hissed. Sparky hissed back.

Peter huffed.

 

 

Sparky did not want to go home, wherever home was for it. It clung to Wade when he tried to hand it off to Stark, and then it said its name over and over in increasing distress when he carried it away like a baby to wherever he needed to stick it to send it back to where it belonged.

Wade kind of felt sad about it.

Red absolutely felt sad about it and had smothered the thing in affection for an hour before he’d even given it back to Wade to begin with.

When Wade got home, however, he found Bella sitting triumphant in a circle of shattered glass and torn papers.

She stared at Wade in challenge.

“Really?” he said.

She tossed up her tail and stalked off into the hall, leaving him to bask in her vengeance.

Fuckin’ teenagers.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic of] heinz 57](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903853) by [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid)




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